When God Makes All Things New

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

I have to admit that parts of Revelation make me a little uncomfortable.

Not because I don’t believe them. I do. But so much of the Bible tells us about people, places, and events that happened in history. We can read about Jesus walking through Galilee, Paul traveling through the Roman Empire, or David running from Saul.

Revelation is different. Much of it points us toward realities we cannot currently see and events that have not yet happened. That means we should approach it with some humility. There are things about the future that God has simply not explained to us in detail. But that doesn’t mean he hasn’t told us anything.

And one of the clearest pictures we get of where all of this is headed comes near the end of the Bible, in Revelation 21.

John writes:

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away.”

Then he hears God say something remarkable:

“Look, I am making everything new.”

That one sentence tells us an enormous amount about the Christian hope.

Christianity Is Not an Escape Plan

Sometimes Christians talk about eternity as though the goal is simply to escape this world and go somewhere else. Earth is bad. Heaven is good. Someday we leave one for the other. But Revelation 21 gives us a more beautiful picture than that.

God does not abandon his creation.

He renews it.

John sees a new heaven and a new earth. The realm of God and the realm of humanity, which we currently experience as separated, are brought together. God’s presence is no longer something we occasionally sense, pray toward, or experience through the Holy Spirit.

God dwells with his people.

This has always been the direction of the biblical story. Humanity begins in a garden in the presence of God, sin fractures that relationship, and the rest of Scripture tells the story of God working to restore what was broken.

At the end, God does not throw everything away.

He makes all things new.

There is an important difference between making all new things and making all things new.

Revelation gives us reason to believe there is continuity between the creation we know now and the one God will renew. John even recognizes Jerusalem. What God creates is new, but it is not necessarily unrecognizable. That means the beauty we encounter now may simply be a preview.

The mountains that stop us in our tracks.

The places that feel like home.

The creativity and beauty human beings have produced.

The people in Christ whom we have loved deeply.

We should be careful about pretending we know exactly what eternity will look like. We don’t. But the picture Scripture gives us is not one of God giving up on creation. It is one of God finally healing it.

The Greatest Gift Is God Himself

Then John hears a loud voice declare:

“Look, God’s dwelling is with humanity, and he will live with them.”

Of all the things God could promise us about eternity, this is the first one emphasized.

God will be with us.

I think sometimes we imagine eternity primarily in terms of what we will receive. No more pain. No more sickness. No more grief. Reunion with people we love. An eternal life that cannot be taken away. Those things matter.

But the greatest gift God gives us is himself.

Think about someone you deeply love. At some point you realize that the best gift they can give you isn't something they can buy. It is their presence. God's ultimate promise is not simply, “Someday I will give you a better life.” It is, “Someday you will be with me.”

And not occasionally. Not from a distance. Not through fleeting moments when you sense his presence during worship or prayer.

Fully. Completely. Forever.

God Will Wipe Away Every Tear

Then comes one of the most intimate pictures in all of Scripture:

“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

When was the last time someone literally wiped tears from your face? It is an incredibly tender act. It says, I see your pain. I know that it hurts. I am here with you. That is the picture John gives us of God.

Every person reading this has accumulated hurts.

Some are fresh.

Some happened years ago and still manage to surface unexpectedly.

Some are wounds nobody else knows about.

Some come from things that happened to us, and others come from choices we desperately wish we could undo.

The Christian promise is not that following Jesus keeps those things from happening. It doesn't. Following Jesus is not a guarantee that life will become easy, prosperous, or painless. Christians get sick. Christians lose jobs. Christians experience heartbreak. Christians bury people they love.

Our hope is something much larger.

A day is coming when God will deal with every hurt permanently.

He will wipe away our tears. And then he will make sure we never need to cry from pain again. John says there will be no more death, grief, crying, or pain. God does not simply comfort his people after evil has hurt them.

Eventually, he removes evil's ability to hurt them at all.

“It Is Done”

A few verses later, God speaks:

“It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.”

There are plenty of things about God’s timing that I don't understand.

Why hasn't God put an end to suffering yet?

Why does evil still have so much influence?

Why do terrible things happen to wonderful people while people who hurt others sometimes seem to flourish?

I don't have satisfying answers for all of those questions. But Revelation allows John to glimpse the moment when God finally says, in effect:

It is finished.

Evil is done. Death is done. Your wounds are healed. Creation is restored. You are home.

God began this story, and God will finish it.

That is our hope.

The Hard Part of the Passage

Revelation 21 also contains something we might prefer to skip.

After describing the future awaiting those who belong to God, the passage speaks about those who remain separated from him. This is a difficult teaching. The Bible uses several images to describe judgment and separation from God, and Christians have wrestled for centuries with exactly how those images should be understood. But we shouldn't soften the basic point until it disappears. The same passage that tells us God will dwell eternally with his people also warns us that separation from God is real.

That should not make Christians smug.

It should make us grateful.

And it should make us urgent.

None of us enters God's future because we managed to become good enough. The sins Revelation describes are not things committed only by especially terrible people. Every one of us needs grace. The Christian message is that our sin no longer has to be our defining identity. Jesus offers us something else.

Forgiveness.

Restoration.

Life.

So What Do We Do With This?

If you have never decided to follow Jesus, you do not have to clean yourself up first. You don't need magic words. You don't need to become a better person and then approach God once you think you're ready.

You turn.

You stop orienting your life around yourself and begin orienting your life toward Jesus. There may be questions you still have.

Ask them.

There may be parts of Christianity you struggle to understand.

Talk about them.

There may even be things in your life you suspect God will eventually ask you to surrender.

Follow him anyway.

Let Jesus begin working on those things as you follow him. And if you already follow Jesus, Revelation 21 should do something else in you.

It should make you want to talk about your hope.

Think about John for a moment. He experienced a vision that must have sounded almost impossible to describe. It would have been much easier to keep it to himself. But he didn't.

He wrote it down. He shared it. And almost two thousand years later, we are still talking about what he saw.

Some aspects of Christianity may feel strange to the people around us. Some of what we believe may even sound unbelievable. That doesn't mean we should be embarrassed by it.

We believe evil will not win.

We believe death does not get the final word.

We believe our deepest wounds will one day be healed.

We believe creation itself will be restored.

And most importantly, we believe that one day God will dwell with his people and we will be with him forever.

We don't know every detail about what that day will look like. But we know enough.

God is making all things new.

And that is a future worth hoping for.